40,000 Acres

Penny and I have had a running joke about owning 40,000 acres of land for years. It started due to a misunderstanding about the amount of land we were discussing as being acceptably large to qualify for a fine home in the country, away from the hustle and bustle of city life. She thought I said 40,000 acres and repeated it back to me questioningly and we’ve run with it ever since.

Driving through the country and see a for sale sign listing 100 acres? Too small. It’s 39,900 acres short of acceptable. Obviously our small city lot falls short of the mark, but we have to live somewhere until the minimally viable plot is acquired.

For my upcoming birthday Penny decided to finally do something about this. She adopted an area of land far greater than 40,000 acres and presented me with a certificate. Since the parcel was selected at random I lucked out in that it actually includes terra firma and not some slice of empty ocean.

Yeah. It’s official with an ID number and everything! How much land is this? Well the website divided up the Earth into 64,000 parcels. At 196.9 million square miles on the Earth’s surface, that comes out to 3,076 square miles. That’s equal to 1,968,640 acres, safely over the 40,000 acre minimum and bigger than the state of Delaware.

Unfortunately for us the ranch is not close to the Bay Area. In fact, it’s in Russia. Orenburg, capital of Orenburg Oblast, is the largest city nearby. The town of Alexandrovsky might be closest town by road to the center of the area adopted. Kazahkstan is just a bit farther to the south.